Monthly Archives: September 2003

Everything that is splendid about the Los Angeles Opera’s Damnation of Faust – about which I rhapsodized at our last get-together – is imponderably awful in Deborah Drattell’s Nicholas and Alexandra, the season’s second offering and the company’s first full-scale commission, given here its world premiere. For three excruciating hours, the sad fate of Russia’s […]

Photo by robert millard Everything you could hope to encounter in an evening of truly enlightened musical drama – superb music splendidly comprehended, a dramatic concept original yet honorable, a stage design to stimulate the eye – is there for your delectation in the Los Angeles Opera’s La Damnation de Faust, which began the company’s […]

Christopher O’Riley toiled honorably at the Hollywood Bowl last week, and so did the Philharmonic under its excellent assistant conductor Yasuo Shinozaki, but the music slumbered on. Edvard Grieg’s Piano Concerto has, I’m afraid, reached the end of its useful days. Like its spavined companions in the ranks of warhorses ready for the glue factory […]

Okay, so the science guys have backed down, and Mozart’s music no longer bears the seal of approval as a remedy for dumbness. Believe this if you will – you and the Times‘ Mark Swed, who broke the sad tidings in his review of last week’s all-Mozart program at the Hollywood Bowl. I sat through […]